The Monthly Adventures #066 - “The Game" by Darin Henry

What in the everloving f**k did I just listen to? What the actual hell was that? Why does this have 3.36/5? Is everybody f**king with me? Is this all some big prank? People can’t think this is good! I mean, The Game is not just a travesty of scriptwriting, it is a travesty of being, a microcosm of all the things wrong with this repugnant thing we call a “society”, a leviathan of fault, a hydra of mistake and woe! Ok, I’m overreacting, but this story was really bad and I have absolutely no idea why it seems to be relatively well received. I even saw somebody describe it as “nuanced”. We must have listened to different stories. Before The Game came along, my absolute least favourite Monthly Adventure was Winter for the Adept, an absolute trash fire with painfully bad dialogue, cartoonish characters, random plot points shoved in for no reason, a villain who we were told was threatening more often than they actually were and Five and Nyssa, coincidentally, as the TARDIS team. The Game is like that, but without the enjoyment factor of a hilariously bad script. I went back and forth on the rating but I eventually realised that I have literally nothing I can genuinely say I enjoyed about The Game, and so here it is folks, my marathon’s very first 1/10!

On Cray, anybody can play Naxy. A war that has long ago evolved into something even deadlier, the great game of Naxy is the planet’s bloody pastime. But as peace negotiations to end the slaughter begin, the Doctor arrives, and with him shadowy figures who want The Game to never end…

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Jesus Christ, where do I even begin? Maybe with the fact that I liked two scenes in this entire story: the commentator narrating his own death was the only time this story felt like genuine satire and Carlisle dying is good out of context of the rest of this dumpster fire even if only because of the actors in it. There, those are my positives. I can’t even use my usual fall back of “it had some good ideas” because, whilst this had a few OK concepts, it managed to screw all of them up.

Let’s start with the big one: a war that has turned into a sport. Good idea on paper, hell, I can even imagine that as a short story in an old vintage sci-fi collection, a K. Dick or Bradbury stint. It’s definitely a good idea on paper. “On paper” being the important part of that sentence. The game of Naxy is quite literally hundreds of people running onto a field and killing each other with spears. Ok, not the most inspired idea but the writer could still spin some abject horror from the sheer, mindless violence of it all. Or, he could just have the characters tell us how horrible it is and then have the scenes presented with the levity of a particularly rowdy football match, which he does.

My main problem with this story is the melodrama, I have never seen anything this blatantly unsubtle before in my life. Move over Chibnall, I have a new idol of tell-don’t-show to rag on. Not one single moment of this story is conveyed naturally to us, even moments that don’t need to be. The dialogue is astoundingly horrendous. Every time Henry attempts some kind of irony or satire, he just has to have a character, with over dramatic tears in their eyes explain to us why that is bad and we should be shocked. There’s a scene in the second part where a character spontaneously bursts into tears without warning and literally says how horrible and disturbing Naxy is. And then we get onto the point, of which there is none. A planet treating war like sport is positively ripe for some biting political satire; not the subtlest approach, sure, but violence on the battlefield merged with football culture is a neat idea, if only Henry tried. This audio isn’t saying anything, there isn’t a single nuanced thought about the nature of war or violence or why we commit it anywhere. The deepest meaning I can pull from The Game is that murder is bad. I agree, but like, come on, do better. 

Not to mention that this storyline is dropped halfway through - about a hundred moments of heavy handed allegory in, it suddenly decides to change its entire story and become about a mob boss trying to steal the Doctor’s TARDIS? What? What is the moral of this story: don’t get too into football or a mafioso will come after you? Is it not a political commentary because it is definitely trying to be?

I actually have a theory about this. See, I’m about 90% sure Henry ran out material a few parts into writing The Game and so hastily came up with a new story and stapled it on. If not, then I’m just confused. Especially when we have characters like Hollis. See, Hollis is the star player for one of Naxy’s two teams. He’s built up as ego-driven, obsessed with the game and willing to do anything to win. The Doctor is eventually forced into a one on one with Hollis (in the most pathetic attempt at writing a character dilemma I have ever seen) and Part 4/6 (because this has six parts for some reason) ends with Hollis quite literally screaming “prepare to die!”. How does the Doctor get out of this? Well, apparently, it’s because Hollis immediately drops all prior characterisation in this exact moment and decides that murder is bad actually, making an impromptu speech about how Naxy needs to end. And then a bunch of dog men invade the arena. Can you tell why I think Henry ran out of ideas here?

Not to mention Hollis then suddenly becomes a main character, despite being introduced by very creepily hitting on Nyssa. Yeah, I’m also not sure what Henry’s intentions were there because, whilst he makes multiple references to the subjugation of women on Naxy, he also has his two female characters constantly teary-eyed or falling for objectively terrible people. Granted the second one is because the villain has magic sex hormones, which is incredibly disturbing and rapey and rubs me the wrong way put in this story of all things.

You know what, let's talk about the antagonist because he might just be the worst character I’ve seen in a Doctor Who story. Morian is the aforementioned mob boss who comes out of nowhere four parts into this story and I hate him. This is the least threatening human being I have ever seen and we’re constantly told about how evil and villainous he is. It also doesn’t help that he has a cartoonish villain plan involving canine henchmen and trying to steal the Doctor’s TARDIS, all of which he explains in full to the Doctor most likely whilst twiddling his moustache. Add on the frankly unnecessary implication that he’s a rapist and he is an uncomfortably bad intrusion who I was never once afraid of.

Eventually, it all comes to a merciful end but that is no less muddled. Carlisle, a character I haven’t really talked about and don’t really care about (played for some god forsaken reason by the late William Russell) dies and Morian is quite easily defeated by, lets see here, the combined camaraderie of the Naxy players. I’m sorry? So, all that murderous sport was… good, actually, and unified the planet in the end? I ask once again, what the hell is this story meant to be telling me? They then try to set up Morian as a returning villain and I have never been happier that a story never happened. Anyway, everybody is friends now magically and they pat each other on the backs and the Doctor and Nyssa f**k off to somewhere else, yipee.

The Game is a story that tired me. That’s all it did, the dialogue was unbearable, as were the characters. It shouted at me about things it didn’t have to say, deceived me on what it was even meant to be about and forced me through a maelstrom of conflicting plot lines and motivations and that’s without having the time or space (heh) to write out 100% of my thoughts. I hated The Game and yet can not see that hate reciprocated nearly anywhere. I have looked on TARDIS Guide, I have looked on the Site that Shall Not be Named, I can not find a negative review for this and I have to ask why, I have to know what others see in it because for all intents and purposes, The Game has to be one of the worst stories I’ve ever had to sit through.

1/10

Pros:

+ I liked a total of two scenes in this entire thing

Cons (oh boy here we go):

- Painfully unsubtle and melodramatic

- Absolutely fails in writing analogy and satire

- Shoves in numerous plot points without any cohesion.

- Every character is annoying. Every. Single. One.

- Completely changes the story halfway through

- Has possibly the worst antagonist I have ever seen in a Doctor Who script

- Nyssa’s role seems to be relegated to tearfully explaining the plot to the audience

- Half the cast is stilted

- Characters have complete 180° shifts for no reason

- I honestly can’t tell if this writer is a feminist or a misogynist

- Atrocious dialogue

- Muddled ending that didn’t know what it wanted to say

MR: 066 The Game

Well I did enjoy this one quite a bit, although I feel like it kind of became a bit confused towards the end. Still, a lot of the ideas here are good ones.

A well distinguished and noted peace negotiater, Lord Carlisle, is going to the planet Cray to host a peace negotiation. The planet is in the middle of a civil war which is quite embarrassing for Earth because it was apparently just named Earth's twin planet. The Doctor is here, on vacation (!) to see Lord Carlisle in action, one of his biggest heroes. Definitely a weird taste in vacations, but sure. The Doctor is a weird guy. It's particularly interesting to me because this Doctor seems like he'd be rather averse to war. After all the losses he's suffered and the times when everyone has died. "There should have been another way," Indeed.

The civil war, however, is a sport. The sport of Naxy. Thousands of people go into the arena to "play" this sport that is literally just people killing each other with swords while an announcer cheerfully commentates on their deaths or "retirements." The "coach" is actually a general leading their troops into battle. Thousands of cheering fans watch the carnage. Indeed, Maxi started out as a more normal sport, but it evolved over time into an actual battle when fans started taking to slaughtering each other over their favorite teams. Fights in the streets turned lethal and the game adapted to suit the bloodthirsty desires of its fans.

This is hardly the first story to make the connection between sport and war. But Doctor Who itself has rarely tread this ground, if ever. Big multi-million dollar sports can certainly feel like a war with the fanaticism over your favorite team and the fights that can break out after a game. It often feels like two teams are two opposing armies going to war with things like playbooks, like tactics,, and star players, like generals. It's certainly a much more healthy place to channel that aggressive tribalism than outright war. But that desire to see blood ends up bleeding through into the sport.

There's also the obvious connection of the Roman Colliseums. That is pretty much the same thing. Hundreds of people gather to watch people get slaughtered for sport. The sport and the rules are just an excuse to see carnage. There's something about us as humans that is drawn to violence and danger. But perhaps not our own. We can watch a horror movie, but we would not be pleased to be in our own situation where we could very well die.

The Fifth Doctor is a great Doctor for this too, as the cricket Doctor. He has an affinity for the late 19th/early 20th British Empire. Another time of barely concealed barbarism disguised as civilization. We're confronting him with the awful truth of the carnage behind those cheerful/pleasant faces. This is when the story does well. When it sits on this metaphor and just explores it and the characters' reactions to it.

The Doctor gets press ganged into playing the game while Nyssa goes off and stumbles into the peace maker. The Doctor refuses to play, but ends up making a game winning "play" by trying to retreat but circling around and attacking the opposing team in the back. And so he becomes the new super star with the fans wanting his autograph. I'm sure the Doctor feels extremely ashamed that people want his autograph for getting people killed.

As the super star he gets to sit in on the peace conference where Lord Carlisle fails rather spectacularly leading to a one on one game of Naxy with the Doctor and the other team's champion. Naturally he can't refuse or thousands more people die. When he goes to fight the opposing fighter has a sudden change of heart and wants to end the game.

And this is where it gets a bit messy. This triggers a well known criminal and casino owner named Morian to try to shut down the games. He's been pulling the strings all along, you see. He's making a ton of money on selling tickets to Naxy to offworlders and didn't want to shut it down, but it was inevitable that one team would win and wipe out the others. His weird plan here was to lure the Doctor out to see Lord Carlisle, steal the Doctor's TARDIS, and then use it to bet on the outcomes of games, using time travel to know the results.

I guess there's something to be said for having a corporate overlord making money off war. War is certainly very profitable when you sell the weapons. But he comes in with an alien army and it gets a bit muddled and loses focus. Still, it's a good point to make. The Doctor defeats him by exposing his manipulation of the game to the teams who all gang up on him before he runs away.

Now, the reason why Lord Carlisle failed so spectacularly is because he is actually a fraud. The Doctor has been the one doing these peace conferences. He has been meeting the Doctor out of order, like River Song. This is now the first time the Doctor has met him, but the last time Lord Carlisle has met him. The Doctor is his best friend, but the Doctor doesn't even know him. He even berated him during the conference for failing so badly. Nyssa found out about this earlier on, but didn't tell the Doctor for... reasons. Still, it's cute that we have this idea a long time before River. It's definitely a good idea, of course. There's a reason why it works so well with River.

There's some other interesting stuff going on here. The marketing and profits of one team go towards the other. That's kind of f**ked. It means there's an incentive on the top for the team to do poorly so that the other team does well in marketing. That's why one of the coaches sides with Morian, for the money. It's also interesting that there used to be many teams, but they were all eliminated. Because of course they were. There's a "retirement facility" where hundreds of bodies get piled up as well.

I liked a lot of what this story was doing. It was really grim, but it suits this Doctor very well. The idea of a sport that is really a war is an effective one and hammers home the stark relationship between the two. An announcer cheerfully announcing tactics of war as if it's a game is a pretty stark image. Definitely a good one, though the ending is a bit muddled.

I like this one a lot, on the whole. There's a really cool core concept here with some nice twists and additional layers of nuance. The Doctor and Nyssa are both written well. My main gripe is that some of the characters have changes of heart quite quickly without much reason.

AND WE'RE OFF, and The Game is off to a great start, an interesting premise, fun light, nu-who atmosphere, returning cast in new roles, it's playing all the favourites, but what's this? Uhhh, The Game fumbles the ball, the plot is moved forward by the companion not being able to say one sentence! Oh, you just hate to see it, it was going so well too!
No, it's all down now, it's losing focus, it's just meandering out there!! But what's that!? It, somehow, recovers, The Game does, it seems like it's gotten itself back on track, focusing on the points that really matter, plot points that make sense, characters acting like they should and who could say no to a big action set-piece? It seems like it's really going to score, and score well!

Oh! There seems to be a development on the field, and it's not good folks, It's a boring, run-of-the-mill villain who over-explains his very basic motivations. Ufff, that's gonna dock some points, still, folks, we've seen that play work out before, haven't we? I recall the 2010 match of Vincent and The Doctor, where the villain was similarly an of-the-week type, and that worked out beautifully, didn't it? And, of course, I need not remind you of The Waters of Mars, once in a century match that! So, just as long as it doesn't hinge the entire plot on the villain being interesting we could still see a hell of a game out there!

Oh no, what this!? A cliffhanger resolved by a character having a sudden, basically unexplained change of heart, the judges are not going to be happy with that one.
But is that a bit of a recovery I'm seeing? A genuinely well-written death scene for the main secondary character, that's nice- but, oh no! 15 minutes of backstory, horrible exposition, a cheesy villain monologue, The Game is just floundering out there!
But, The Game might still stick the landing, he's going for a classic walk-and-talk wrapup, let look at the judges, uhh, they're not impressed. Well, I'm not entirely shocked, it has become a bit of a cliché on the field. AND WE'RE HOME, The Game scoring there, now, it wasn't as clean a score as we, of course, would have liked, and the lead-up was more than a bit bumpy, the judges are going to have to take that into account.
Are? Yes, I am getting word that the judges are ready to score The Game, and The Game gets... a 6! Uhh, not the best, though I am not entirely surprised with the play we've seen here today, but what is it we always say folks? Anything above a 5 is a victory.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Creatures of Beauty

There's a lot to praise about this story. The general idea is so simple yet absolutely fantastic, a planet at war except the war is in the form of an ongoing sports competition. This brings up some great moral dilemmas for the Doctor, especially in his one-on-one duel to the death.

William Russell's character (yes he's in this!), is brilliant and I wouldn't be surprised if he somewhat inspired River Song 3 years later by being a character that meets the Doctor "out of order". Russell has brilliant range and is able to play Lord Darzil Carlisle perfectly. He has some great moments with Nyssa allowing to her to really develop as a character. His character in general is quite a tragic addition to the story that I absolutely love.

As I mentioned before, Nyssa gets great character moments, so does the Doctor however. This is a planet that goes against everything the Doctor believes in so it's interesting to see how he copes with this. I do feel like he let the citizens get off lightly and was even quite chummy with some of them despite how many people they killed but that's a philosophical debate for another time.

Morian is an excellent addition to this story even if I feel like Part 4 is when the story gets a bit muddled. I was hoping to see him get justice but this seems to be a plot thread that isn't further explored unfortunately. Still I think he's a decent adversary to the Doctor and it's refreshing to have a villain that genuinely has no other motivations except money.

All in all, a very fun story, a bit gruesome but with an excellent cast and a solid idea supporting it this is one I thoroughly recommend.

Next Story: Circular Time: Spring